


credit for your second symphony

by GreyishBlue



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint likes to feel pretty and record it, Everyone is gonna live in the tower and everything is going to be fine eventually, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) is a Good Bro, M/M, Naughty Videos, Non-Government Sanctioned Hacking Procedures, Not Canon Compliant, Pack Bonding with a Laptop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23113672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyishBlue/pseuds/GreyishBlue
Summary: Bucky Barnes is trying to figure shit out after the fall of HYDRA and SHIELD. Hacking into the Avengers tower database seems like a decent place to start, but he finds way more than he was looking for.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 47
Kudos: 223
Collections: Winterhawk Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Winterhawk Bingo Square: The Internet  
> Title from Video Killed the Radio Star
> 
> Hey this was supposed to be a throw away fill that got away from me. Sure hope y'all like it. Unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own. Feral hours, baby.

Bucky thinks it’s been a few weeks since he fished that idiot blonde out of the river. His dreams are bright with the bruises and blood across that hauntingly familiar face. He’s still waking in a cold sweat thinking about the end of the fucking line and whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. This is the longest he’s been out of cryo, the way his brain throbs with shards of memories has him certain of it. 

He’s been in worse safe houses than his current one through the years HYDRA had him, but it is the first he’s chosen on his own and he feels oddly protective and judgemental of the space all at once. Trying to make decisions shoves him into a web of fears and instincts that exhausts him to untangle. But this much, he’s managed.   
He's holed up in the attic space of a boarded up building that’s just close enough to a Starbucks to piggyback on their wifi. There’s a disconnect in him, having to look up what the hell wifi is after setting it up on a small stolen laptop. The little holes in his knowledge and memory drag at him; drive him to try to find out more about himself, his life, whomever the hell the Avengers are.

He spends a few hours trying to hack remotely into Avengers Tower - and really, who the hell names a place after the crazy superhero team that lives in it? It doesn’t go well in any of his straight forward attempts, the main servers locked tighter than any government he’s been programmed to hack. In a moment of desperation and in the hope of not throwing the harmless machine he’s using at a goddamned wall, he tries the public servers attached to the network. He hopes at the very least he might come up with some unclassified personnel files.

There’s a shocking amount of random data just sitting there, open to anyone. Well - anyone with a fairly high level of technical training. Programming. Whatever. Slogging through dozens of recipes for mac and cheese is a special kind of hell that makes him wish he was still locked entirely out of the system. Nothing seems to be organized, there’s just a chaotic mix of files. Some are text, ranging from a seemingly personal journal to a tourism guide of Brooklyn. There’s an incomprehensible bunch of images, mostly featuring cats with captions. He saves one of a particularly small white kitten.   
  
His eyes are starting to droop with exhaustion when he opens up a folder labeled “H”, a small cascade of video thumbnails populating the screen one at a time. He’s intrigued, they’re the first video he’d encountered thus far. He pushes through a jaw cracking yawn and clicks the first mp4 file.

A shaky frame of a couch, covered in a soft looking purple blanket, accompanied by a muffled scrape of fabric as the camera microphone brushes against whatever it’s being set on. Whoever is filming spends another minute fiddling with the placement until they’re seemingly happy with it. Tilted down far enough that the top half of the couch is obscured, just an edge of floor marring the endless purple. A deep pleased hum is barely audible from somewhere offscreen, it takes Bucky a moment to realize he enjoys the sound of it. 

There’s a blurred moment of something passing too close to the camera for a clear view, then a man drops lightly onto the couch, visible only from his well defined abs down. He sprawls his long tanned legs wide. One of his hands drags up the thin skin of his inner thigh to cup his cock through the tight black briefs he’s wearing.

Bucky hits pause quickly enough that he hears a concerning crunch. He hisses a curse and inspects the little laptop, frowning at a small crack along the middle of the space bar. Murmuring a soft apology to the machine that he feels kind of dumb about, he avoids looking back at the paused image on the screen while he closes it carefully and sets it aside. He nearly trips on the way out from his safehouse in his haste, and he’s definitely not running from the flash of heat that surged through his body. Nor how the dark soulmark on the man’s wrist looks identical to the one on his own.

Contrary to the anxious thudding insistence of his heart, it doesn’t take actual hours to find a dingy little store that sells computer parts. Just about twenty minutes and a few polite questions to a diminutive woman that seems thrilled with his manners and carefully enunciated Korean. He manages to avoid thinking about anything other than his self-appointed mission to repair vital operational equipment all the way through finding the store, the purchase, and taking a new route back to the hidden entrance of his safehouse.

Then he’s standing in front of the hopefully-water stained mattress in the corner, staring at the computer. He’s an unparalleled assassin, feared the world over. A damned ghost story, he’s changed the course of history, done and forgotten an untold amount of horrors. Still, he’s shaking a little, legs unsteady in a way he didn’t realize they could be as he crouches down to the floor. He has to breathe slow and careful to get the tremor out of his hand before reaching out like the small grey rectangle is going to bite him when he opens it. 

When he edges it slowly open, the screen is mercifully dark. His hands are gentle and efficient with the tiny tools from the second-hand repair kit. He smiles softly down once he’s replaced the spacebar. It’s a different shade than all the other keys, almost the dull metal color of his left arm. There’s no underlying damage though, he breathes more easily hearing the soft click of the key working well.

Repair done, he switches the machine back on and resolutely opens the video again. The slightly blurred image, pause marker across the middle of it, still shows a swipe of darkness over the fine bones of the man’s right wrist. It’s not clear enough to see the shape of the mark, but even that’s sending Bucky’s heart into decidedly un-assassin-like thumping. His right hand, the one that can still feel warmth and the stuttered flow of his blood through it, hovers over the new spacebar. 

His soulmark - it feels traitorous at the moment - stains over that wrist, a silhouette of an arrow through a star. HYDRA had told him the star was theirs, mirrored on the mechanical left arm they’d given him; another layer of control, insisting his soulmate would be one of their own. Seeing a star blazed across the chest of the man he’s recently remembered as Steve Rogers shattered some part of his programming that day on the helicarrier. He’d  _ remembered _ that outfit. 

For a fleeting, terrifying moment he’d been sure he would be connecting with his soulmate by punching him across the jaw. There was no bloom of color on his wrist, no voice whispering against the back of his mind easily in tune with his own. It was disappointment and relief in equal measure, swiftly drowned in the adrenaline of the fight. Everything Steve said that day cracked Bucky’s mind just that bit more open, and it all fell back together to end him up here, scared as hell to push play on a video. 

He does, gentle with the key, and keeps his eyes steadily trained on the mark. Even as the man’s arm slides slowly up, muscles tensing when he twists a bit at the apex of his motion. There’s the arrow, through a star, curving around just the same way it does on his own wrist. 

The way the man’s stomach tenses when he squeezes is distracting enough that Bucky’s eyes stray. From there he can’t help but watch. The man strokes himself through the silky material of his briefs, thumbing across the tip of his dick where it’s visible past the waistband. Bucky clicks the volume up a few notches to listen to the soft panting occasionally broken by a needy sounding whine. 

The video cuts out to black abruptly and Bucky huffs at it in disappointment. Then he has to try to figure out what exactly he was hoping for. The man’s face? Maybe he’d be kind enough to recite his name and address into the camera after shooting off onto his abs? He clicks through to the next video. It’s similar, the camera placed near the floor, with the same man already kneeling in frame. He’s in white lace this time, garters clipped primly to matching stockings. He touches himself in almost the same way, one of his hands reaching out of frame and angled like he might be playing with his nipple. It too cuts out before the man can reach his satisfaction.   
  
Bucky resolutely ignores the tightness of his pants through the next few videos. He reasons that eventually one might give him a further clue to who this is, and why the hell they’ve got these videos sitting around a barely secured server linked to Avengers tower. Each is maddeningly well framed, never reaching past the man’s rib cage. He keeps watching, eyes stuttering from the mark that feels like it’s taunting him to the stunning body of the man on display. 

The last in the folder seems to be on the same couch as the first. The man is faced entirely away from the camera, shoulders and chest resting down on the far arm of the couch. The backs of his thighs and his ass fill enough of the frame to block out any chance of seeing his face. The hand he’s using to work a slim purple wand in and out of himself is his left, so Bucky can’t even pretend he’s watching for another view of the soulmark. There’s a low moan of “Oh god, oh  _ fu- _ !” as the man’s body tenses, but it cuts out mid-word.    
  
Bucky has no trouble finishing the phrase. In fact, he has no trouble ranting at the little computer screen, asking it in some kind of desperation how the hell he’s supposed to do any of this. He’s got to figure out who Steve Rogers is to him, how to not be on the run from every form of authority, and how to find a faceless man that apparently likes to make dirty videos and has his fucking soulmark. 

He’s breathless and a little wild at the end of his diatribe, hair hanging in front of his face where it’s escaped a half hearted bun. There’s a soft beep from his laptop accompanied by a pop up window. 

**I am under authorization to provide you with the name and location of the individual with your matching soulmark designation. This individual is under my protection and not accessible to any persons with hostile intent. Is this understood?**

  
Bucky stares down at the message, whispers a few curse words in various languages, then a couple more when he realizes there’s a small red light on next to the built in camera of the laptop. He picks a language at random and asks if it can see him. The light blinks and a small smiling emote flickers across the screen. He sighs.   
  
“Yes, understood. Uh… could I please have the information?” He has no idea who or what he’s asking this of, but there’s a persistent need to be polite pulling from his hazy memories. A name pops onto the screen that he doesn’t recognize, along with an address he does.    
  
Apparently his soulmate is in Avengers Tower.


	2. Chapter 2

He asks his computer a few more questions and gets polite, concise replies to them all. The entity communicating with him calls itself JARVIS and provides a set of credentials that he’s got to admit is truly impressive. He hesitates, types his last question in so he doesn’t have to hear himself say it.    
  
_ Why would you trust me? _   
  
In response, a folder pops up into view on his machine. Inside, he finds hundreds of pages of information, all about… well, him. There's James Buchanan Barnes - bright eyed and smooth jawed - in a uniform he doesn't remember wearing. A brochure for a museum exhibit boasts more images of him, often near (that idiot) Steve Rogers. Further down, each item has a warning in bold lettering, he only ends up opening one. He doesn’t need the entire picture of the chair to load; he clicks back out. The warning label is on  _ so _ many files. At the very end, one last picture, the one he’d saved from all the data earlier. The tiny white cat drags the corners of his mouth up despite himself.

He sighs, closes out of it entirely and tells JARVIS he’s on the way. There's isn't anything to pack, he just tucks the little laptop into his jacket and leaves, not bothering with the lock on the way out. He follows the route JARVIS suggested for him, though not entirely. He has to double back a few times, just to confirm to himself that he isn’t being followed. When he’s satisfied everything is clear he pats the laptop, a quick apology for not trusting it.    
  
JARVIS had informed him he could enter the lobby safely, so he walks through the front door as casually as he can manage. It’s a beautiful building, shining surfaces all reflecting tasteful decor. He tries a smile at the bubbly looking receptionist, but she blanches and her eyes go wide. The elevator bings loudly before she can decide whether his appearance warrants actual panic. 

Bucky glances over to see four men exiting the sliding doors. Three are in black tactical gear and heavily armed, helmets covering their faces. The fourth is a scruffy looking blonde, wearing sweatpants and an open purple hoodie partially hanging off his wide shoulders. He’s turned back to the others, arguing with them and shoving their guns down when they try to get Bucky in their sights. The way he’s gesturing with his arms, something in the quality of his voice, it’s familiar in a way that sends a chill down Bucky’s spine.    
  
Once the tactical team stands down, the blonde turns and Bucky can finally see his face. It’s the same as the picture JARVIS had provided. His nose is crooked; broken too many times to set straight anymore. A dusting of freckles starts across his cheeks and travels downward haphazardly. His grin is easygoing, it wrinkles the skin around his eyes. They’re a specific shade of blue that Bucky can’t remember the name of; the absurdity of trying to figure it out hits him all of a sudden. 

The guy lifts his hands slowly, palms out, like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. His sleeves shift, Bucky’s eyes catching the little streak on his wrist. Bucky moves without thinking, crossing the space between them with a speed most human eyes shouldn’t be able to follow. He gets his fingers nearly close enough to touch, needing desperately to know. The man catches his wrist instead, and whatever either of them were about to do is lost in a blur of emotion.    
  
For a second, it feels like burning where his mark rests, then it blooms into shades of purple and navy. The burn settles just as he feels the edge of the other man’s thoughts whispering somewhere near the back of his skull.    
  
“You’ve seen my dick?” blurts Clint Barton, a blush flooding through his face even as his grin turns upward.    
  
“What the hell is a murder strut?” is the best Bucky manages to reply, eyes moving in disbelief from Clint’s face to where they’ve got twin marks newly colored on their wrists. 

There's a distinctly uncomfortable shuffling behind Clint, the tactical team unsure of what to do with a rogue assassin that's just bonded to their apparent team lead. One raises his weapon a few inches and is stopped in his tracks by Clint's glare. 

"He's coming upstairs with me, and all of you are going to stand the fuck down, right now." Clint's voice is near a growl, full of righteous anger and maybe a little fear. It makes Bucky shiver.

"He needs to be searched for weapons, Barton." One of them replies, sneer evident in his words even with his face blocked by his helmet.

Bucky tenses and presses his free palm over the laptop where it rests under his jacket. He tries to take a step back; Clint's hold on his wrist is like iron. He could break it, but it would require force that he doesn't want to use against anyone anymore, much less his soulmate. Clint looks at him with a gentleness that's terrifying, says softly, "No one else is going to touch you, okay? J filled me in. Will you come upstairs with me?"

He can't recall the last time someone really cared about his decision in any given scenario, so it takes a little while to parse what Clint is asking him. Eventually he nods, asks so quietly that Clint has to lean forward to catch it, "Please don't make me get in the elevator with them."

Bucky's mind is a swirl of memories, all the times he's been surrounded by handlers. Faceless men and women herding him from ice to pain to blood he has to spill. Clint gasps softly, clearly catching enough from Bucky to understand. 

"Clear out, Perkins. We're goin' up." There's a dangerous sounding finality to his tone. The men move out of Clint's way, reluctance evident in the jerkiness of their movements.

Clint leads Bucky into the elevator, hand still wrapped around his wrist like he might be a little afraid to let go. Once the doors slide closed behind them, Clint slumps and loosens his hold. He's still taller than Bucky by a few inches even slumped against the wall. Bucky liked that he has to look up a little to watch as his lips move, "Honestly wasn't sure if I'd get away with that one. Fuckin' Strike teams."

Bucky isn't sure if the guy is expecting a response. He shuffles awkwardly and tries to think happy thoughts so Clint doesn't pick up on the chaos of confusion in his mind. There's a little push back - like a soft pressure in his skull - and a cascade of comfort floods into him. It's mostly shaped like dogs, happy bounding things that fill his heart with warmth. 

His mouth doesn't seem to want to get with the program but he wants to offer something - and oh god this is his  _ soulmate _ \- so he thinks hard about the white kitten from the picture. Then he slips into thinking about Clint's abs, because the twitch right before he's about to come is a thing of beauty that definitely brings Bucky joy. 

The way Clint blushes all the way into the torn collar of his ratty t-shirt certainly confirms that he's getting Bucky's thoughts loud and clear. He glances up at the corner of the elevator before muttering, "Wanna explain how those videos got around, J?"

A soft familiar beep sounds and words scroll into being across the glass wall in front of them.

**Mr. Barnes attempted to hack my servers and I was prompted to run the Peeping Tom Distraction Protocol. My database indicated that your personal,** ** _and_** **_unsecured_** **, video collection would be highly effective.**

Bucky finds himself holding back a laugh for the first time in his functional memory. Somehow the mechanical entity in the ceiling is sassing Clint. How the hell it manages to do so without vocal inflection is a genuinely impressive mystery. His delight sparks something in Clint, so they're just looking at one another all goofy grins and wrinkled eyes.

The doors open with another soft beep, and Bucky shoves himself haphazardly behind Clint the second he sees the people waiting in the sprawling room beyond the elevator.

"Hey, hey? You alright?" Clint immediately has him caged into the comforting tangle of his long limbs.

Bucky can't possibly explain the terror of seeing Steve Roger's hope filled face in front of him. He looks desperately up into Clint's worried eyes and grasps for the words to explain. He can't find them, just a tumble of images and fear in his mind keeping him frozen behind the taller man. 

Clint sees it, Bucky can watch the play of emotions clear on his face as he sorts through the chaos Bucky is feeling. After a very confusing minute of being caged in by the glorious warmth of Clint's body while their thoughts run through a feedback loop of each other, Clint steps back with a soft comforting smile. There's a quick spike of anxiety right before Clint presses a soft gentle kiss to Bucky's cheek. Bucky is too shocked at the realization that the feeling wasn't his to react, just watches as Clint moves confidently toward Steve.    
  


Steve is being held back in no uncertain terms by a man Bucky recognizes from the fight. He looks smaller without the metallic wings, but his hand gently against Steve's chest is enough to stop him. Bucky's mind stutters for a moment, an image of another blonde. Small and fiercely angry, held back by struggling men twice his size. The winged man is holding this much larger version of Steve so easily, Bucky almost wants to know the story there. Not enough to move from the spot Clint left him, though.

Clint approaches Steve calmly, with a determined set to his shoulders. They talk in lowered voices, eyes flickering over to where Bucky stands still, flesh hand wrapped in a death grip around the laptop through his jacket. He knows he could pick up their words if he focused on them, but it's easier to just drift to the warm place in the back of his skull that's filtering comfort into him tinged in purple.

Steve slumps, resignation or defeat in the lines of his body. Clint leans forward to wrap Steve in a hug quickly; the stab of jealousy from Bucky comes across clearly enough that he's jumping away like it burns. He's blushing as he comes back, hesitating a beat before offering his hand to Bucky. 

Bucky takes it while trying valiantly not to think about the way those long calloused fingers look dipping beneath a lace waistband. He fails spectacularly, judging by the way Clint trips over nothing as they're walking down the hallway. They don't talk until they're in a set of spectacularly messy rooms, and it's just Clint huffing a soft  _ whatthefuck _ as he drops himself back against the door. The tips of their fingers are still hooked together, just standing and staring at one another. 

Bucky doesn't know what to say, how to explain, how to apologize to this kind man for saddling him with the trainwreck he is as a soulmate. His anxiety spins up tightly in his chest as he struggles for the words, finally just stuttering out an apology that's barely intelligible.

Clint understands him just fine, "Hey, no. Don't be sorry, I'm probably just as much a disaster. We… well we really gotta talk at some point." He sighs deep, tendrils of something concerning slipping around Bucky's head before its tamped down, "But not right now, alright? I've got, uh. Do you like cartoons?"

Bucky doesn't know. His voice feels scratchy from disuse but he manages a reply, "I don't know, I'm sorry?"

Clint frowns but it's accompanied by a flood of colorful warm images, like he's trying to share every cartoon he's ever loved right into Bucky. It drags the corners of Bucky's mouth up just enough. The images tint red and pink, slip sideways into something a little dirtier. Bucky nearly feels his brain go offline when he realizes that Clint is watching his mouth. 

"Shit, sorry! Uh, come on. We're gonna sit down and watch cartoons and try not to freak out about all this, okay?" Clint's got a grin across those freckled features that Bucky wouldn't deny for anything; he follows easily to a slightly ratty couch. 

When they sit, there's a few polite inches between them, both their spines straight with tension. A few episodes of something with a lot of dog characters in, Bucky feels the exhaustion of the last few decades catching up to him all at once. He slumps into Clint's side, can't really ask if he's alright with it, but tries sending the question through the new tingly place in his mind. Clint sends back something that feels like glitter and warmth from the sun rather than answering out loud, and Bucky is grateful. 

He knows they've got to talk, sometime soon. He's got to figure out Steve, and the pretty guy that was wrapping him up as they left. He's probably still got to figure out how not to be an international fugitive, even. But all those things are for later. Right now he's got the warmth of someone meant for him at his side, and Bucky Barnes is damn well going to take the win and let sleep claim him.


End file.
